太上玄靈北斗本命延生真經

Tàishàng xuánlíng Běidǒu běnmìng yánshēng zhēnjīng 太上玄靈北斗本命延生真經

True Scripture on Prolonging the Life-Decree at One’s Natal Destiny, by the Mysteriously Numinous Northern Dipper, of the Most High

anonymous Sòng revealed scripture (zhēnjīng 眞經) in one juàn of nine folios, framed as a discourse of Tàishàng Lǎojūn 太上老君 to the Celestial Master Zhāng Dàolíng 張道陵 at Chéngdū 成都 in the first year of the Yǒngshòu 永壽 reign (155 CE, a revelational fiction), preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 622 / CT 622, 洞神部本文類). One of the four short “Dipper-stars” scriptures (KR5c0003–KR5c0006) at the head of the Běnwén 本文 subcategory, and the single most widely recited Daoist scripture of the late-imperial and modern Běidǒu 北斗 cult.

About the work

The scripture stages itself as a direct revelation by Tàishàng Lǎojūn, descended from the Tàiqīng 太清 realm to a jade throne (yùjú 玉局) at Chéngdū on the seventh day of the first month of 155 CE, to impart the “oral formulae of the Scripture of the Northern Dipper’s Natal-Destiny” (Běidǒu běnmìng jīng jué 北斗本命經訣) to the “Heavenly Master” (Tiānshī 天師), i.e. Zhāng Dàolíng. The theological core is the identification of each human being’s běnmìng 本命 (“natal destiny”) with one of the seven Dipper stars according to one’s earthly-branch (dìzhī 地支) year of birth: 子-year natives belong to Tānláng 貪狼, 丑 and 亥 to Jùmén 巨門, 寅 and 戌 to Lùcún 祿存, 卯 and 酉 to Wénqū 文曲, 辰 and 申 to Liánzhēn 廉貞, 巳 and 未 to Wǔqū 武曲, 午 to Pòjūn 破軍. Two additional “hidden” stars (Dòngmíng wàifǔ 洞明外輔 and Yǐnguāng nèibì 隱光内弼) and the three Sāntái 三台 stars (Shàngtái Xūjīng Kāidé 上臺虛精開德, Zhōngtái Liùchún Sīkōng 中臺六淳司空, Xiàtái Qūshēng Sīlù 下臺曲生司祿) round out the system.

The body of the scripture consists of four litanies and a hymn. The first litany (Dàshèng Běidǒu jiě’è yìngyàn 大聖北斗解厄應驗) enumerates twenty-five categories of calamity (è 厄) from which invocation of the Seven Original Lords can deliver — the Three Disasters, the Four Killings, the Five Phases, the Six Harms, the Seven Wounds, the Eight Tribulations, the Nine Stars, husband-wife discord, male-female discord, childbirth, recurrent epidemic (fùlián 復連), plague, illness, demonic possession, tigers and wolves, worms and snakes, bandits, cangue-and-cudgel, violent death, malicious oaths, celestial net (tiānluó 天羅), terrestrial snare (dìwǎng 地網), weapons, and water-and-fire. The second gives the twelve star-epithets. The third is the Dipper incantation (Běidǒu zhòu 北斗呪). The closing hymn (zàn 賛) repeats the refrain “A household that possesses the Dipper Scripture…” fifteen times, itemising the blessings: the descent of true numen, the stabilising of the dwelling, long life of parents, disarming of calamities, turning of evil to good, flourishing of business, health of the entire gate, glory of descendants, opening of the five paths, extinction of all ills, prosperity of livestock, healing of disease, preservation of wealth, never arising of crosswise troubles, and lasting yuán hēng lì zhēn 元亨利貞 (“primal, free, profitable, correct” — the four cosmic virtues of the Yìjīng 乾 hexagram).

Prefaces

No authorial preface; the opening is the revelational frame itself. The closing statement of Zhāng Dàolíng’s reception and vow of transmission (lines 170–194) functions as a colophon of revelation rather than a preface: “When Lǎojūn had finished expounding the scripture, a dragon and a crane of the heavenly immortals came to escort him back to the Jade Capital. At that moment the Heavenly Master, having received the wondrous teaching, made this vow: ‘I pledge to transmit and propagate it among virtuous gentlemen. Should any man or woman receive, preserve, read, and recite it, I will — together with the immortal-officers of the Ten Precepts — be everywhere present to protect him.’ So saying, he prostrated himself twice.”

Abstract

The Southern-Sòng bibliographer Cháo Gōngwǔ 晁公武 (c. 1105 – 1180), in Jùnzhāi dúshū zhì 郡齋讀書志 16.765–766 (completed 1151), condemned the scripture in the following terms: “Books like the Běidǒu jīng, which pretends to have been revealed by Lǎozǐ in Yǒngshòu 1 (155), and which is moreover vile and ridiculous (bǐ lòu kě xiào 鄙陋可笑), even though much in circulation today, must nonetheless be omitted” — a verdict that gives the terminus ante quem. The terminus post quem is less precise: the earliest firmly datable citations come from Bái Yùchán 白玉蟾 (DZ 1307 Hǎiqióng Bái zhēnrén yǔlù 海瓊白眞人語錄 1.2b, 3a, thirteenth century), which confirms circulation but no longer constrains the date; a more useful earlier marker is DZ 1224 Dàomén dìngzhì 道門定制 5.19a (compiled by Lǚ Yuánsù 呂元素, 1188) which prescribes the recitation of the Běidǒu jīng in the full Sòng liturgical calendar. The body of the text nevertheless incorporates older material: the Dipper star-lists are drawn from the Six-Dynasties Běidǒu 北斗 / Běidì 北帝 tradition (cf. DZ 1265 Běidì qīyuán zǐtíng yánshēng bìjué 北帝七元紫庭延生秘訣), and the revelational frame — Lǎojūn descending at Chéngdū to Zhāng Dàolíng in 155 — is shared with the cognate scriptures KR5c0004 (DZ 623 Běidǒu běnmìng chángshēng miào jīng), KR5c0005 (DZ 624 Nándǒu liùsī yánshòu dùrén miào jīng), KR5c0006 (DZ 625 Dōngdǒu zhǔsuàn hùmìng miào jīng), and KR5c0007 (DZ 626 Xīdǒu jìmíng hùshēn miào jīng). Modern scholarship (Schipper in S-V 2:983) accordingly dates composition to the Sòng, most likely the eleventh century, though a Northern-Sòng origin cannot be narrowed further; frontmatter notBefore/notAfter are set to 960/1151 (the Sòng dynastic lower bound to Cháo Gōngwǔ’s critique).

The scripture is a foundational document of the late-imperial Daoist soteriology of the běnmìng — the notion that each person’s vital span is governed by a specific celestial agent and may be extended through the correct liturgical observance on one’s natal day. It is central to the Daoist calendar of běnmìng rì 本命日 (the day of one’s natal stellar patron) and the Sāntái Běidǒu 三台北斗 liturgies of the modern Zhèngyī and Quánzhēn orders, and is included in the Dàozàng jīyào 道藏輯要 (DZJY 104) independently of the Ming Dàozàng.

Translations and research

• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:982–983 (DZ 622, Kristofer Schipper).
• Mollier, Christine. Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face: Scripture, Ritual, and Iconographic Exchange in Medieval China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008, ch. 3 — on the Buddhist Běidǒu parallel Foshuo běidǒu qīxīng yánmìng jīng (T. 1307) and the cross-traditional formation of the Dipper cult.
• Franke, Herbert. “The Taoist Elements in the Buddhist Great Bear Sutra (Pei-tou ching).” Asia Major, 3rd ser., 3 (1990): 75–111.
• Andersen, Poul. The Method of Holding the Three Ones: A Taoist Manual of Meditation of the Fourth Century A.D. London: Curzon, 1980 — §Beidou, on the pre-Sòng Dipper tradition.
• Lagerwey, John. Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History. New York: Macmillan, 1987, 42–46 — on the present-day liturgical life of the scripture.

Other points of interest

The scripture’s claim of revelation in 155 CE mirrors the revelation-date of the foundational Celestial-Master texts (the Dào and its covenant were revealed to Zhāng Dàolíng in 142 CE in the same cave-grotto of the Héshàng shān 鶴鳴山, per Celestial-Master internal tradition); the present text deliberately transposes that primal date forward by thirteen years to secure for itself the full institutional weight of Celestial-Master authority without claiming identity with the foundational revelation. The běnmìngjiāchén system (matching earthly branches to Dipper stars) codified here becomes — via Yuán and Míng popular recensions — the ritual core of the běnmìng dēng 本命燈 (natal-destiny lamp) observance still practised today in Taiwanese and overseas-Chinese Daoist temples on one’s lunar birthday.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5c0003
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 2:982–983 — DZ 622 entry (K. Schipper).
• Wikipedia: Beidou jing